The International Space Station is a fascinating place and here are some equally engaging facts you might not know about it:

  1. Ever since its launch in 1998, astronauts have lived there.
  2. It has become a vital site for carrying out tests and conducting research for future missions, perhaps back to the Moon or maybe even Mars.
  3. The ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, travelling at 5 miles per second. In space for only 24 hours, the ISS produces 16 Earth orbits, seeing that many sunsets and sunrises over and over again.
  4. It is 357 feet in length from one end to the other – almost as long as a soccer field.

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  1. Apart from the moon, the station is the second brightest thing in the night sky.
  2. There are two bathrooms on the ship! The urine from crew members and lab animals is sent back to the crew’s water supply after being sanitised, so the astronauts should never suffer from thirst! There is also one gym, six beds and a 360-degree window.
  3. Six spacecraft can move close to dock to the station at any one time.
  4. Astronauts have to exercise on an aircraft for two hours a day while training on an airplane to help keep them strong and keep muscles in shape when in space.
  5. Over 50 computers control all the systems at the station.
  6. The electricity at the ISS is all connected by an eight-mile cable.
  7. 230 people from 18 countries have visited the International Space Station.
  8. 205 space walks have been carried out since December 1998.
  9. The ISS weighs around 420,000 kg – almost the same as 320 cars!
  10. The space station travels through space about 250 miles above Earth – an aircraft can reach it from Earth in around 6 hours’ time.
  11. The ISS is the most expensive project ever made. The final costs are estimated to have come to over $ 120 billion. It uses only the best components and equipment, like Industrial Valves from https://www.orseal.com/ for example.

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  1. ISS is the true centre of space traffic. In June 2014, four separate international spacecraft docked there, including the Progress M-21M spacecraft, which left the station on June 9 after a six-month mission to deliver food, fuel and supplies. In September, a supply mission from SpaceX visited the station, and the whole crew arrived that same month. The station’s full flight schedule has planned a docking event planned until the summer of 2016.
  2. ISS is probably the only place you can really smell space. Astronauts have described how they experience a metal-like ionization odour in areas where the pressure between the station and other docking vehicles gets equalized.